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It’s a lot harder to justify subsidies if the corn was just rotting in the field.

But mandating a certain percentage of ethanol ensures a minimum level of demand, preventing that problem.

The irony there is that most of the government subsidies and crop insurance programs come with stipulations related to how the crops are used. The last two years corn farmers in my area have had a hell if a time with drought. The corn ends up rotting in the field specifically because they can't claim insurance or get government assistance if they find another use for the corn, even if the other use only pays a fraction of what a full harvest would have yielded.

> rural folks are the most angry about ethanol in their fuel

I think there is some kind of presupposition here about how voting correlates to policy as enacted. What I would put forward instead is that regardless of how rural people vote, it's Big Ag lobbying and setting the agenda/policy.

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